Background
He was born in November 1898 in Han-shou hsien, located near the southwest edge of Tung-t’ing Lake in northern Hunan.
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Hsu Chih-chen
Edit ProfileEducation
Much of the information on Hsu’s early career is drawn from his official obituary, and according to this source he participated in the May Fourth Movement (1919) and then joined the China Socialist Youth League in 1921 and the CCP in 1922. In the early twenties Hsu went to Moscow, where he attended the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, which had opened in 1921. Among Hsu’s classmates at this institute were such leading Communists as Jen Pi-shih, Wang Jo-fei, Chao Shih-yen, and Hsiao Ching- kuang.
Career
In approximately the 1925-1927 period, according to his obituary, Hsu served successively as head of the Organization Department and then the Propaganda Department of the Hunan Party Committee, after which he was transferred to Hupeh, where he was secretary of the Hankow “Local Committee” and then chairman of the Han-yeh-p’ing Trade Union. Han-yeh-p’ing refers to the great iron and steel complex in and around Hankow, the largest in China proper. One source describes this union, organized by Li Li-san, Hsiang Ying, and Ts’ai Shu-fan, as the most powerful in China excepting only the railway workers’ union. Inasmuch as the Fourth All-China Labor Congress was held in Hankow in 1927, it seems probable that Hsu, in the area at the time, attended it. If so, he was doubtless in contact with Liu Shao-ch’i and Li Li-san, both of whom were at this congress. In any event, from this point in his career, he devoted most of the remainder of his life to trade union work.
Whatever his activities may have been in the Soviet Far East, Hsu was back to China during the Sino-Japanese War, where he was engaged in publishing and printing. He served as head of the Hopeh-Chahar Printing Press Workers Union and as director of a printing plant in the Shansi-Chahar area. During these wartime years there was a Central Publishing Bureau subordinate to the Party Central Committee, and Hsu served as its secretary-general. With three key positions in the fields of management, trade union leadership, and Party supervision, it is apparent that Hsu was a central figure in the publication world of Communist-held areas. He was also a co-translator in 1940 of a 1915 essay by Lenin entitled Socialism and War.
In August 1948 the Communists convened the Sixth All-China Labor Congress in Harbin, the first held since a secretly convened congress in Shanghai in 1929. Hsu attended the Harbin congress and was elected to the Executive Committee of the All-China Federation of Labor (ACFL) as well as to the Standing Committee. In addition, he was named to head the Federation's Culture and Education Department, although he gave up this post in 1949. Hsu assumed three posts in 1949 that made him one of the most important ACFL leaders for the next few years, particularly in view of the fact that the Federation chiefs (like Ch’en Yun and Li Li-san) were occupied with several other activities aside from trade union work. First and most significant was Hsu’s position as secretary- general, often the crucial post in Communist organizations. Closely related to this post was that of director of the Federation’s Staff Office, the unit charged with the administrative work of the ACFL. Finally, he headed the Finance Section under the Staff Office. He held all these posts until 1952 and then was replaced in the most important one (the secretary-generalship) by Lai Jo-yii, a senior Party leader.
Politics
According to Hsu’s obituary, after the split between the Nationalists and Communists in 1927, he engaged in “progressive work” among Chinese workers living in the “Soviet Far Eastern districts.” This cryptic statement may mean that Hsu was in the Maritime Province area; in view of the fact that he was involved in publishing work during the Sino-Japanese War, it is possible that he worked in Vladivostok to promote the use of a Latinized script for writing Chinese. In the mid-1920’s there were an estimated 100,000 Chinese living in the USSR, of whom approximately 22,000 lived in Vladivostok. Intensive efforts, led by Ch’ii Ch’iu-pai, were made in this city to romanize Chinese. The “First Conference on the Latinization of Chinese” was held in Vladivostok in September 1931, and 13 months later a similar and better-attended conference was held in the same city. The work of these conferences brought about further educational efforts, including the publication of tens of thousands of new textbooks, which in turn led to near total literacy in the new script among Chinese in the USSR. If in fact Hsu was in the Vladivostok area, he was probably also in contact with Liu Ch’ang-sheng, one of the top Chinese Communist trade unionists.
In January 1950, Hsu gave a report before a Standing Committee meeting of the ACFL on the attendance by Chinese trade unionists at meetings of the International Transportation Workers’ Association in Rumania and the International Agricultural and Forestry Workers’ Association in Poland (both affiliate unions of the Communist-led World Federation of Trade Unions). From the fragmentary information on this report, it is not clear if Hsu himself attended these meetings (possibly after his visit to Moscow), or whether he was simply acting as a spokesman for colleagues who had attended. At the same meeting, a Research Committee for the ACFL Constitution was formed, with Hsu as one of its members. This was obviously the prelude to his report on revisions to the Constitution given at the Seventh All-China Labor Congress in May 1953.
In October-November 1951, Hsu attended the third session of the First CPPCC, which stressed the need for austerity and economy to support the military effort in Korea. Interestingly, at a meeting of the ACFL held on January 1, 1952, shortly after the close of the CPPCC, Hsu subjected himself to mild self-criticism. The meeting was described as a “mobilization meeting for the struggle against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. Yet it was clear that Hsu was not in any particular trouble, because in the same year he assumed still another key post in the ACFL when he became head of the Organization Department, a post he held at least until the close of the Seventh Labor Congress in May 1953.
From 1959 to 1961, Hsu took three more trips abroad, each connected with trade union work. In May 1959 he attended the European Trade Union and Workers’ Conference at Goer- litz in East Germany, and in August-September of the same year he led a trade union group to North Vietnam for the 14th anniversary of the “Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” Finally, in February 1961 he led a small delegation to North Vietnam for the second national congress of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. Hsu remained fairly active in trade union work in Peking through 1962, but then dropped from public attention until he was re-elected in September 1964 as a deputy from Shantung to the Third NPC. However, he never served in this NPC because on October 26, 1964, just shy of his 66th birthday, he died in Peking. His funeral committee consisted of a number of leading Party figures and was headed by Politburo member P’eng Chen.
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Born
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Died
1964 (aged 66) -
Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1921